The Long, Hot Summer

At first glance The Long, Hot Summer looks like some tossed-out Tennessee Williams pages run through a Hollywood blender, but it’s actually a lot more fun then most of Williams’ stiff adaptations. Though, for literary street cred, it’s title card reads William Faulkner’sThe Long, Hot Summer, because apparently it’s kinda-sorta, but just barely, based on his novel The Hamlet. It doesn’t come close to the emotional depth of Williams’ or Faulker’s best work, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Directed by Martin Ritt, who would go on to a long and distinguished career, the film sports an exciting cast of scenery chewers having a chance to do their corniest Southern accents. The Long, Hot Summer is a classic mash-up of contemporary Southern pulp and suppressed sexuality (think Cat on a Hot Tin Roof meets Picnic, or a much more entertaining version of The Fugitive Kind).

Emerging superstar Paul Newman (who also the starred in the similar, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in the same year) stars as Southern bad boy Ben Quick, a rogue con man and known arsonist who, after being run out of a town, wanders into another and quickly moves up the food chain of the local fat-cat, Will Varner (Orson Welles, only 42 years young at the time, forced to play much older, which explains his bizarre makeup job which looks almost like he is doing blackface, and may explain why his ham-level is turned up to eleven). Verner, a widower, owns the town and sees in the hotshot Quick a younger version of himself, something he’s doesn’t see in his own son, Jody (the even more miscast Anthony Franciosa). Jody may be married to the town beauty, Eula (Lee Remick), but he’s too spoiled and emotionally weak to carry out the legacy Verner dreams for his family. His daughter Clara (Joanne Woodward) is smart and modern, not the shallow belle her father can relate too. She has been limply wooed for years by momma’s boy Alan (Richard Anderson, a secret 50s supporting actor superstar who specialized in boring businessmen, but is probably best known for playing Oscar on TV’s The Six Million Dollar Man). By '50s movie standards Alan is probably gay and does not have the sexual desire to ever make Verner a grandfather (more echo’s of Tennessee Williams). So Quick quickly works his way up through the family business. Verner cuts a deal with him: wed Clara, give him grandchildren, and he will be comfortable for life. Clara doesn’t fall for Quick’s good ol’ boy charm, but hey, it’s Paul Newman, so eventually she has to give in, that is if his reputation for starting fires doesn’t get him first.